A Few Loose Screws

Here's my first artwork for the new year. A friend introduced me to the ambient works of Aphex Twin, and it's really, really good... a nice breather from their usual industrial-electronica thing.

I was listening to the tracks 'Domino' and 'Cliffs' while sketching this on paper. I like the effect that it made, actually.. I started on the brain first, and then things went on from there. The music also made me space out enough to work in the details.

I thought of challenging myself from the usual composition that I use, which is a singular subject surrounded by smaller elements as accessory. I wanted this one to have several major things happening at once, and to somehow achieve balance in terms of where I can lead the eye of the viewer over the piece.

In terms of color, I introduced the highly saturated colors at the bottom left of the piece, and instead of balancing these colors with something of the same saturation at the upper right... I figured I'll leave it at that. At least the viewer's eye can start there and wander of to the upper right, savoring every detail along the way.

I also made an effort to achieve a semi-painterly style, instead of my usual marquee-coloring technique. It's a bit hard, because I'm using the 10% opacity of various brushes and layering it over and over again until I get the texture I want. That's the reason it took me several hours to work on the shading.

I'm happy with it but I know it still can improve a lot more. However, I'm leaving those improvisations on the technique for my next pieces, I'll just let this go now :)